Departed Child! I could forget thee once
Though at my bosom nursed; this woeful gain
Thy dissolution brings, that in my soul
Is present and perpetually abides
A shadow, never, never to be displaced
By the returning substance, seen or touched,
Seen by mine eyes, or clasped in my embrace.
Absence and death how differ they! and how
Shall I admit that nothing can restore
What one short sigh so easily removed?
Death, life, and sleep, reality and thought,
Assist me, God, their boundaries to know,
O teach me calm submission to thy Will!
The Child she mourned had overstepped the pale
Of Infancy, but still did breathe the air
That sanctifies its confines, and partook
Reflected beams of that celestial light
To all the Little-ones on sinful earth
Not unvouchsaf...

Sad is the Evening: all the level sand
    Lies left and lonely, while the restless sea,
Tired of the green caresses of the land,
    Withdraws into its own infinity.

But still more sad this white and chilly Dawn
    Filling the vacant spaces of the sky,
While little winds blow here and there forlorn
    And all the stars, weary of shining, die.

And more than desolate, to wake, to rise,
    Leaving the couch, where softly sleeping still,
What through the past night made my heaven, lies;
    And looking out across the window sill

See, from the upper window's vantage ground,
    Mankind slip into harness once again,
And wearily resume his daily round
    Of love and labour, toil and strife and pain.

How the sad thoughts slip back across t...

I sit by the fire musing,
    With sad and downcast eye,
And my laden breast gives utt'rance
    To many a weary sigh;
Hushed is each worldly feeling,
    Dimmed is each day-dream bright -
O heavy heart, can'st tell me
    Why I'm so sad to-night?

'Tis not that I mourn the freshness
    Of youth fore'er gone by -
Its life with pulse high springing,
    Its cloudless, radiant eye -
Finding bliss in every sunbeam,
    Delight in every part,
Well springs of purest pleasure
    In its high ardent heart.

Nor yet is it for those dear ones
    Who've passed from earth away
That I grieve - in spirit kneeling
    Above their beds of clay;
O, no! while my glance upraising
    To yon calm shining sky,
My pale lips, quivering, mur...

Sorrow, on wing through the world for ever,
Here and there for awhile would borrow
Rest, if rest might haply deliver
Sorrow.

One thought lies close in her heart gnawn thorough
With pain, a weed in a dried-up river,
A rust-red share in an empty furrow.

Hearts that strain at her chain would sever
The link where yesterday frets to-morrow:
All things pass in the world, but never
Sorrow.

Sad is the lonely sea -
So vast, and smooth, and grey
It stretches far from me.
Sad is the lonely sea!
Its cheerful colours flee
Before the fading day.
Sad is the lonely sea
So vast, and smooth, and grey!

The circle is broken, one seat is forsaken,
One bud from the tree of our friendship is shaken;
One heart from among us no longer shall thrill
With joy in our gladness, or grief in our ill.

Weep! lonely and lowly are slumbering now
The light of her glances, the pride of her brow;
Weep! sadly and long shall we listen in vain
To hear the soft tones of her welcome again.

Give our tears to the dead! For humanity's claim
From its silence and darkness is ever the same;
The hope of that world whose existence is bliss
May not stifle the tears of the mourners of this.

For, oh! if one glance the freed spirit can throw
On the scene of its troubled probation below,
Than the pride of the marble, the pomp of the dead,
To that glance will be dearer the tears whic...

Hou, O my Grief, be wise and tranquil still,
The eve is thine which even now drops down,
To carry peace or care to human will,
And in a misty veil enfolds the town.

While the vile mortals of the multitude,
By pleasure, cruel tormentor, goaded on,
Gather remorseful blossoms in light mood
Grief, place thy hand in mine, let us be gone

Far from them. Lo, see how the vanished years,
In robes outworn lean over heaven's rim;
And from the water, smiling through her tears,

Remorse arises, and the sun grows dim;
And in the east, her long shroud trailing light,
List, O my grief, the gentle steps of Night.

'O cast away your sorrow;
A while, at least, be gay!
If grief must come tomorrow,
At least, be glad today!

'How can you still be sighing
When smiles are everywhere?
The little birds are flying
So blithely through the air;

'The sunshine glows so brightly
O'er all the blooming earth;
And every heart beats lightly,
Each face is full of mirth.'

'I always feel the deepest gloom
When day most brightly shines:
When Nature shows the fairest bloom,
My spirit most repines;

'For, in the brightest noontide glow,
The dungeon's light is dim;
Though freshest winds around us blow,
No breath can visit him.

'If he must sit in twilight gloom,
Can I enjoy the sight
Of mountains clad in purple bloom,
And rocks in sun...

It comes not in such wise as she had deemed,
    Else might she still have clung to her despair.
More tender, grateful than she could have dreamed,
    Fond hands passed pitying over brows and hair,
    And gentle words borne softly through the air,
Calming her weary sense and wildered mind,
By welcome, dear communion with her kind.


Ah! she forswore all words as empty lies;
    What speech could help, encourage, or repair?
Yet when she meets these grave, indulgent eyes,
    Fulfilled with pity, simplest words are fair,
    Caressing, meaningless, that do not dare
To compensate or mend, but merely soothe
With hopeful visions after bitter Truth.


One who through conquered trouble had grown wise,
    To read the grief unspoken, unexpressed,

This is not sadness in the wood;
The yellowbird
Flits joying through the solitude,
By no thought stirred
Save of his little duskier mate
And rompings jolly.

If there's a Dryad in the wood,
She is not sad.
Too wise the spirits are to brood;
Divinely glad,
They dream with countenance sedate
Not melancholy.

Beside the open window she is lying,
    Through which comes softly in the balmy air,
And fans her wasted cheek; but slowly dying,
    She seeth not that autumn's finger fair
    Tinges the golden landscape everywhere.

She seeth not the glory of the maples,
    That in their crimson robes surround her home;
Nor the rich red of the ripe clustering apples
    In the old orchard, where can never come
    Her flying feet to stoop and gather some.

That is her home where in life's young May morning,
    She careless sung the joyful hours away;
A happy-hearted child, to whom no warning
    Came of the future shipwreck by the way,
    Or of the worshipped idol turned to clay.

The place has passed to strangers; unregretting,
    She looks upon the hom...

I.

Death's Eloquence.


When I shall go
Into the narrow home that leaves
No room for wringing of the hands and hair,
And feel the pressing of the walls which bear
The heavy sod upon my heart that grieves,
(As the weird earth rolls on),
Then I shall know
What is the power of destiny. But still,
Still while my life, however sad, be mine,
I war with memory, striving to divine
Phantom to-morrows, to outrun the past;
For yet the tears of final, absolute ill
And ruinous knowledge of my fate I shun.
Even as the frail, instinctive weed
Tries, through unending shade, to reach at last
A shining, mellowing, rapture-giving sun;
So in the deed of breathing joy's warm breath,
Fain to succeed,
I, too, in colorless longings, hope til...

All stupor of surprise hath passed away;
    She sees, with clearer vision than before,
A world far off of light and laughter gay,
    Herself alone and lonely evermore.
Folk come and go, and reach her in no wise,
Mere flitting phantoms to her heavy eyes.


All outward things, that once seemed part of her,
    Fall from her, like the leaves in autumn shed.
She feels as one embalmed in spice and myrrh,
    With the heart eaten out, a long time dead;
Unchanged without, the features and the form;
Within, devoured by the thin red worm.


By her own prowess she must stand or fall,
    This grief is to be conquered day by day.
Who could befriend her? who could make this small,
    Or her strength great? she meets it as she may.
A weary struggle a...

Have patience, O my sorrow, and be still.
You asked for night: it falls: it is here.
A shadowy atmosphere enshrouds the hill,
to some men bringing peace, to others care.

While the vile human multitude
goes to earn remorse, in servile pleasure’s play,
under the lash of joy, the torturer, who
is pitiless, Sadness, come, far away:

Give me your hand. See, where the lost years
lean from the balcony in their outdated gear,
where regret, smiling, surges from the watery deeps.

Underneath some archway, the dying light
sleeps, and, like a long shroud trailing from the East,
listen, dear one, listen to the soft onset of night.

We laugh when our souls are the saddest,
We shroud all our griefs in a smile;
Our voices may warble their gladdest,
And our souls mourn in anguish the while.

And our eyes wear a summer's bright glory,
When winter is wailing beneath;
And we tell not the world the sad story
Of the thorn hidden back of the wreath.

Ah! fast flow the moments of laughter,
And bright as the brook to the sea
But ah! the dark hours that come after
Of moaning for you and for me.

Yea, swift as the sunshine, and fleeting
As birds, fly the moments of glee!
And we smile, and mayhap grief is sleeting
Its ice upon you and on me.

And the clouds of the tempest are shifting
O'er the heart, tho' the face may be bright;
And the snows of woe's winter are drifting

1.
How stern are the woes of the desolate mourner,
As he bends in still grief o'er the hallowed bier,
As enanguished he turns from the laugh of the scorner,
And drops, to Perfection's remembrance, a tear;
When floods of despair down his pale cheek are streaming,
When no blissful hope on his bosom is beaming,
Or, if lulled for awhile, soon he starts from his dreaming,
And finds torn the soft ties to affection so dear.

2.
Ah! when shall day dawn on the night of the grave,
Or summer succeed to the winter of death?
Rest awhile, hapless victim, and Heaven will save
The spirit, that faded away with the breath.
Eternity points in its amaranth bower,
Where no clouds of fate o'er the sweet prospect lower,
Unspeakable pleasure, of goodness the dower,
When woe...

Poor the pleasure
Doled out by measure,
Sweet though it be, while brief
As falling of the leaf;
Poor is pleasure
By weight and measure.

Sweet the sorrow
Which ends to-morrow;
Sharp though it be and sore,
It ends for evermore:
Zest of sorrow,
What ends to-morrow.

"When will the grave fling her cold arms around me,
    And earth on her dark bosom pillow my head?
Sorrow and trouble and anguish, have found me,
    Oh that I slumbered in peace with the dead!

"The forests are budding, the fruit-trees in bloom,
    And the voice of the turtle is heard in our land;
But my soul is bowed down by the spirit of gloom,
    I no longer rejoice as the blossoms expand.

"And April is here with her rich varied skies,
    Where the sunbeams of hope with the tempest contend,
And the bright drops that flow from her deep azure eyes
    On the bosom of nature like diamonds descend.

"She scatters her jewels o'er forest and lea,
    And casts in earth's lap all the wealth of the year;
But the promise she brings wakes no transports in ...